The Union flag was officially brought down in Afghanistan last year, but to this day the involvement of British intervention in the region remains a point of heated controversy.
Troops lowered the flag at Camp Bastion in October, ending combat operations in the country after 13 years.
Despite the Ministry of Defence's (MoD) position in refusing to comment on any operations involving the SAS, it has been reported that British troops have been deployed to Afghanistan to help local forces fighting to recover a key town after it fell back under Taliban control.
A British soldier carries a carefully folded Union Flag under his arm as the last British boots leave Camp Bastion, Helmand Province, Afghanistan Photo: PAIt appears their role was to back American special forces and the Afghan National Army as they try to retake Sangin, in Helmand province, from the resurgent Taliban. There are also elements of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on the ground.
The British military suffered its heaviest losses in Sangin during its deployment in Helmand. The area had been handed from 40 Commando Royal Marines to the US Marine Corps, ending a four-year UK presence that cost 106 British lives.
In total there have been 456 British forces personnel or MoD civilians killed while serving in Afghanistan since the start of operations in October 2001.
Many of those were victims of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED), the weapon of choice for the Taliban for much of the conflict, while others met their fate in so-called "green on blue" attacks as the people they were helping and mentoring turned on them.
The Union flag was officially brought down in Afghanistan last year Photo: MoDThe US, which has suffered more than 2,000 deaths, endured one of the deadliest attacks on foreign forces in Afghanistan this year when a Taliban attack near Bagram killed six US soldiers.
Among its many problems Afghanistan was struggling against poverty and corruption in its quest for stability, which has brought education to millions of children in schools and colleges all over the country. A fierce Taliban onslaught was not completely successful in stopping the education of young girls.
When British troops pulled out of Afghanistan, the nation's new president Ashraf Ghani said the Afghan people would remember that the UK stood "shoulder-to-shoulder" with them.
He acknowledged that the armed forces had paid a "very high price" for bringing "stability" and said driving out al-Qaeda had been in Britain's "national interest".
David Cameron added there was no prospect of the UK going back to fight in Afghanistan.
The MoD states there are now a small number of UK personnel who are deployed to Camp Shorabak in Helmand province as part of a larger Nato team which is advising the Afghan National Army.
A file photograph of British troops in Helmand, Afghanistan Photo: Heathcliff O'MalleySome 12,000 foreign soldiers are deployed as part of the Nato-led Resolute Support international coalition, which is meant to underpin Afghanistan's own security forces.
The conflict began with US-led air strikes on Afghanistan on October 7 2001, with the first official deployment of British forces the following month when Royal Marines helped secure Bagram airfield.
Several thousand more troops followed but the human cost remained relatively low until Britain sent a task force to Helmand in spring 2006.
By the time the British military death toll in Iraq reached 100 in January 2006, there had only been five fatalities in Afghanistan.
Three months later the then defence secretary, John Reid, said he would be "perfectly happy" if UK troops left Helmand three years later "without firing a shot".
Instead, a redoubtable insurgency drew the military into some of the fiercest fighting British forces had experienced since the Second World War.
Despite the large-scale losses over the years, military chiefs and politicians have remained insistent that they have achieved the aims they set out more than a decade ago.
Mr Cameron came under fire in 2013 for saying the campaign was "mission accomplished" for British troops and they could come home with their heads held high.
In February, the then Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said the success of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) – which he said was leading 97 per cent of operations – was a "significant achievement".
He also described April's presidential elections as an "important step on Afghanistan's path to normalisation".
Afghan security forces on patrol in Helmand Photo: EPAThere are still critics who are concerned that the work of British troops, and the losses sustained, may be undone if Afghan security forces cannot retain control of the country.
The legacy of the conflict is also set to continue for years to come, with calls for Mr Cameron to establish a full inquiry into the UK's military campaign in Afghanistan, especially given the scale of deaths compared to the Iraq war, where there were 179 UK military fatalities.
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